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The Steam Plough was situated on Freehold Street and has now been converted to residential use.

Source: Paul Singleton

I note that you list this pub as lost and closed - now a residence. I remember visiting this pub around the period 1971-73 when a friend of mine who lived close by used it as his local. I have lost touch with him, but I remember the pub which was very tiny and was in a street of terraced houses. I think it was in one of them. It was the smallest pub I have ever seen. It was almost as if the owners had opened their front room as a bar - it really looked like a house which had been made into a pub. We had been students at the University of Keele and he was living in Newcastle and working for ICL, a computer firm. The pub was very friendly and I remember going in there with him whilst we were on our way to the funeral of a friend - a Keele student who, alas, died soon after we graduated. I lived a long way away in Teeside then and had not eaten so my friend asked "Can you give this lad something to eat?" They were cooking a roast and it may even have been Sunday. They made me a sandwich - lamb still warm - I think on white bread. The landlord and his wife were really nice people. Outside the pub there was a board with a picture of a steam plough. It was a really funny old place.

Philip Newall, Sydney, Australia

I lived along the road from this tremendous little boozer. There was a lovely old lady who ran it. I think that she was named "Maggie". I cannot remember the name of her budgie though, which had pride of place by the tiny bar. It was the front room of a terrace house and was full with only a dozen people in it. I used to call in for a late one as my last port of call on the way home at night. There were wooden shelves behind the bar with chocolate bars for sale on them. I believe that the bar itself ended up in a local museum.  "Maggie" does have a place in my  memory though and for good reason. In my youth I had taken up parachuting as a hobby. I had done one or two jumps and so now thought that I knew everything. Having been parachuting earlier in the day ( and suffered a rather ego bruising heavy landing ) my foot had become very painful. I was having difficulty putting any weight on it. I was the last customer to leave the Steamplough that night and I found that I was incapable of walking. The pain was immense. "Maggie" despite being fifty years older than me...........more or less carried me down the street to where I lived............... Bless her

Dave Hill (May 2011)

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